Ornaments is a Berlin based label which has been releasing DubTechno and Minimal records - including Marko Fürstenberg’s releases - since 2008. This is the latest album of “Ornaments Symphony” series, the label’s showcase mix CDs that are released once every 2~3 years. Luke Hess (known for few releases from Echocord) has mixed the last version of the series, which is “Ornaments Symphony 2”.

As for this version, Rhauder provides mixes of two different moods in two separate CDs respectively. In CD1, he makes good use of youAND:THEMACHINES’ tracks, even as bridges between different artists’ tracks, and the overall atmosphere of the mix is pretty much oriented to DubTechno. Deepness of DubTechno diffuses as the mix goes on, until youAND:THEMACHINES’ “Sway” starts to play a piano that sounds like the one you would hear in Derrick May’s “Strings of Life”. Then follow are “Light and Shadow” and “The Longer We Wait” by Carlos Nilmmns, which by both create a beautiful climax of the mix to flow in to the world of Detroit Techno. “Sansula (Basic Soul Unit Remix)” which comes at the end of the mix is eerie as some of Drexciya’s tracks, and the closer, “1984” sounds like a Bluesy version of Global Communication’s “76:14”.

I can hear much from The Analog Roland Orchestra in CD2, and feel that the mix here is more Electro and Techno oriented, and danceable than that of CD1. The Analog Roland Orchestra’s “Memoryman” maximizes the Electro mood in the mix, and “Sunbeam” of Mod. Civil which follows sounds like a track that could be sang by Perfume (a Japanese Electro Pop girl group; see their video HERE). After this Electro phase, the flow starting with Redshape’s (whom I call as an extraterrestrial Minimal being of Delsin) remix of “Wax” and ending with Steve Bug’s remix of “Drift” would be the high-light of the Minimal Techno phase in the mix. The closer is Rhauder’s deep DubTechno track which features St. Paul Hilaire. Thus, by providing two separate mixes of two different moods as this, Rhauder might have tried to express the label’s two characteristic aspects, which namely are aspects of ‘tranquility’ and ‘dynamism’.